Design thinking

Source: Design thinking, Tim Brown (2008)

Design thinking is a methodology that imbues the full spectrum of innovation activities with a human-centered design ethos. In the past, people thought that design was some kind of decoration for a product. This has now changed to the better-known concept of design as a way of creating ideas which meet consumers’ needs and desires.

There’s a set of processes for design thinking: inspiration, ideation, and implementation.

Inspiration is related to one’s circumstances. In this stage, one identifies whether an event is a problem or an opportunity, and checks one’s resources and constraints.

Ideation belongs to process. In this stage, one does brainstorming, prototyping, and testing ideas.

Implementation is the path to the market. In this stage, one should design a communication strategy to push products towards consumers.

The article goes on to illustrate its design thinking process by taking two examples: the Aravind Eye Care System and Bank of America’s savings account service, which both applied design thinking. Both cases exemplify the characteristics that the author emphasizes: creative, human-centered, iterative, and practical (CHIP).